My Trip to Korea

After nearly a week of not being able to stay awake long enough to see 8:00, very interrupted night sleep, and very early morning wake ups, the jet lag has finally worn off and I am feeling like a brand new woman! Since I can't clean out the car after our trip to the beach yesterday, I am taking advantage of a typical Florida afternoon thunderstorm to blog for a bit.

My trip out to Korea was fairly uneventful. The trip consisted of a plane ride to Atlanta, another 14+ hour flight from Atlanta to Seoul, a 4 hour bus ride to Gunsan, then a taxi ride to Kunsan. The Lord works in wonderful and unexplained ways and I ran into a good friend's husband in the terminal of the Atlanta airport. He was PCSing to Kunsan where Bill is and was supposed to be on a different flight out of a different city. We were both delighted to have a travel companion and I think it helped both of us to see a familiar face when we were both struggling with an emotionally and physically draining journey. Their family is facing what we went through, and in many ways, are still going through. After a lot of TDY's and a deployment to the desert, they have to be separated yet again, this time for a year. Like Bill, he will miss the holidays with his family, a year of birthdays and anniversaries, his son's first day of kindergarten, and their toddler turning into a little girl (the gender's are switched, but the scenario is the same). His wife is a wonderfully strong woman with a huge heart and kind spirit, a wonderful mother to two sweet kids and a loving and devoted wife. She is facing many of the same struggles that I was and am. She has the huge job of selling a house in a slow market and raising two small children by herself. She will do a great job and gets her strength from the Lord, so please pray for her when you can.

I have a much greater appreciation of what Bill goes through when he leaves. I was a wreck! I have always said that he has a much harder role in this because while we have to go through life without him, he is without us. At least I have the kids to distract me and bring me joy when I miss him. All he has is pictures and internet updates. Now, you have to understand that up until a year ago, I have never left my children overnight. Before this trip I had left them three times, for one night at a time. I spend every day all day with them and I love it. I love being a stay at home (or run around) mom and my children bring me a ton of joy every day. Some days they make me feel like I might loose my mind, but even on those days, they still make me laugh. Needless to say, I really missed them. I cried for 36 hours and locked myself in the airplane bathroom for 30 minutes twice when it got to the point that I felt like I was going to loose it again. Part of it was pure exhaustion since I slept for thirty minutes total on the flight and maybe an hour on the bus, but mostly I just missed them and was probably having a little mommy-guilt about shirking my responsibilities as their mom, even though I knew my husband needed me too. I can't tell you how hard it was to leave them, even though I knew they were in excellent hands. I am thankful for Skype and wouldn't have been able to get through my two and a half weeks away if it weren't for that. Once I saw their sweet little faces on the computer, I was totally fine. Really I think it was because Ryan started laughing as soon as he saw me on the computer next to Daddy and didn't stop until we hung up. A child's laughter is contagious. He thought it was so funny that I was on the computer because I am usually right their next to him. Apparently, I moved into the computer with Bill. You know, where Ryan thinks he lives.

I mentioned before that Korea was way better than I expected it to be. It was actually pretty. Way more mountainous than I expected. There were many things that surprised me. The first thing I noticed on my way into town at night was neon crosses. I saw many more crosses from Christian churches throughout my time there that were not all lit up that first night. Turns out that Korea has a fairly high Christian population, which I love! Of all the Asian nations, the Koreans have the highest Christian poplulation.

The driving also surprised me, first with the fact that their roads are very American, where the rest of Asia has a more European influence. They drive on the right hand side of the road and have traffic cameras. The weird thing is that they don't ever pull anyone over. You see police cars, but you can fly by them and not get pulled over. And stop lights are apparently optional. And it is nothing to be driving 80mph on the main streets in Gunsan. It isn't like this as much in the bigger cities, but if no one else is at a light, people will run it. In Gunsan, you barely slow down to see if anyone is coming. It was crazy! Our first night out I thought we might die! Oh, and regarding the cameras, people take their license plates off or bend them up to avoid having their plates read from the camera. They call it "fencing in." As in, "Hey man, are you going to pull over and fence in before getting on the expressway?" Also, their cars are colorless. Just black, white, and gray for the most part. Bill will have to fill you in on all the weird idiosyncrasies, but it really is the land of the not quite right as the people (Americans) who live there or who have ever lived there will tell you.

My first day there we went hiking with a group of guys in Bill's squadron. It was probably the best thing I could do to beat the jet lag. Fresh air and daylight. We saw some pretty cool temples and Buddhas and really enjoyed the time outdoors.

We got home, cleaned up, and headed out to a pizza joint called Valentine's in Gunsan, the town outside of Kunsan. It tasted a lot like Pizza Hut pizza which the guys love when they are feeling a bit homesick and tired of Korean food. After that we headed to a bar called ZZYZX, which is owned by the Honorary Squadron Commander and coins itself an American Rock Bar. Basically it is a bar like most other bars, but they have the computer hooked up to a sound system and the American patron play songs from itunes, dance, play darts, pool, and drinking games. We entertained ourselves with taps and soju, which is the Korean equivalent of hunch punch. Tastes like kool-aid. The club also has a special tradition for new Juvats and I was lucky enough to receive the new guy shot. I had a lot of fun and can't wait to go back for a Sweep or a Meet AJ (Any Juvat - it's what they call the new guy before he gets his call sign at the naming). The Sweep they were supposed to have got cancelled, but we had a great time anyway.

During my week there, I met some great gals who made my time go by way too fast! The wife of the guy next door is a hairdresser with great talent at their last base in Italy and at a salon in Texas, and we would sit around her room while she cut and colored and we drank wine or mimosas (depending on the time of day) and chatted and listened to music. We went shopping at local bakeries, a nearby city with little shops, and Bill and I went to Lotte Mart which is like a combination of an enormous Super Wal-Mart and a mall-like department store. Despite all of the weirdness of it, I really did like it. Maybe it was the honeymoon period, but I also think I am one of those people who can be happy pretty much anywhere. I have so many things to tell you about, but this post is already so long and I have more awesome tales to tell about our trip to Thailand and so little time.